English

As the Roman Empire's hold on Britain grew weaker, England was subjected to a fresh arrival of settlers from the area of modern Germany. These settlers, tribes of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians, may have first come to England as mercenaries in the Roman army. We know very little of the first several hundred years of the Anglo-Saxon, or "English", era mainly because the settlers were an illiterate people. Earliest records of them are little more than an obscure lists of rulers. We know that they established separate kingdoms, the Saxons settling in the south and west, the Angles in the east and north, and the Jutes on the Isle of Wight. They would have probably thought of themselves as separate cultures, but they shared a common language and similar customs. It is during this push for settlement that the next and greatest British hero was born, the legendary King Arthur.